Week 13: Olympics

An interest of mine has always been the Olympics. Something I see every time I watch, but have never taken notice of until now are the photographers. Hundreds of lenses focused on the athletes at every event in every sport in every arena; they are everywhere, and they have to be. We expect to be able to see those iconic images of the athletes we take pride in when we can't be there in person. We may forget, however, that those images do not exist without the hard work of photographers, and that work is far from easy. I read an enlightening article about what it's like to be a photographer at the Olympic Games. It's insight came from Al Bello, Getty Images chief photographer; he has covered 11 Olympic Games. Bello describes the massive output, physically and mentally, it takes to try and capture the best images on this world stage.

The article detailed what Bello does to prepare for the swimming events, and it was very cool to see. He sets up his Canon camera in a waterproof enclosure that sits at the bottom of the pool. In scuba gear, he dives into the pool to set it up at the correct angle. He runs wires from the camera, out of the pool, and into a computer nearby where he can "adjust the camera and fire the shutter remotely." With everything happening at lightning speed, and often times just once, he must operate extremely quick.


Winter Olympics present another set of challenges. Bello describes downhill ski racing as one of the hardest things to photograph: "You have to ski with 60 pounds of gear on your back, on the same mountain that the skiers are on."

I find this look behind the scenes, into a different side of the Olympic Games, fascinating. Having taken this class, it puts me in a different frame of mind. The things I notice and pay attention to will probably change during the next Olympics.

Link to photos and article: http://www.thisisinsider.com/what-its-like-to-photograph-the-olympics-2016-8

Week 12: Share 2 and Critique

 

 

Week 12: Snow Tips

This week, I've had snow on the brain.
I found an article entitled "7 Tips for Taking Photographs in the Snow" which reminded me of some things I already know and enlightened me on some things I don't. Suggestions I knew included using a bag as protection from water, shooting raw, and referring to your histogram for more accurate readings. Suggestions I didn't know were finding the right white balance and overexposing to compensate. Snow leans to the blue side of color, so the article suggests adjusting your white balance in order to portray the real color of snow. Their tip was to use the flash setting as one way of doing this. The tip that surprised me the most was overexposing the picture to compensate for the camera reading snow at 18% gray. "Adding one-third or two-thirds exposure compensation" can ensure the snow stays white in the photo. Lastly, their talk about the composition of a snowy picture as a whole echoes our rules of dominance. Lots of whites contrasted with a person in a red coat or a red barn bring that snowy scene to life by drawing us in. Photographing in black and white can create clear and clean snowy images, as well.

Link to photo and article: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/7-tips-taking-photographs-snow

Week 11: YNP

I went on the Yellowstone trip this past weekend, and I found it extremely enjoyable. I liked getting out in the field, venturing the different sites and scenes of Yellowstone National Park, and applying the concepts we've learned about photography to the real world. I learned about cameras, what the settings do, which ones to use, and when to use them. Using the different camera gear, having that hands-on experience, was incredibly valuable to me and my learning.

These are some pictures I took on the weekend:

Week 10: Selective Focus

This week, I went back to techniques of the trade. I found an article on Outdoor Photographer centered around using selective focus in photography. The writer, Gary Hart, discusses utilizing a shallow depth of field in order to create images that emphasize and highlight subject detail while creating "focus blur" in the background. He writes on the many factors that go into shooting a creative selective focus image, like camera considerations (lenses, tripod, extension tubes, etc.), choosing a foreground/background combination that's complementary, focusing on the subject, managing the depth of field, and, most importantly, remembering that the camera sees the scene differently than you see it. I especially liked his list detailing how your depth of field will be shallower and your background more blurred the closer your focus point, the longer your focal length, and the larger your aperture. I also liked reading about breaking down a specific shot like this, thinking about what goes into it. It's a lot in one, but being mindful of these things while practicing taking these shots will, I think, speed up the learning process and better the results thereafter.


Link to article and photo: https://www.outdoorphotographer.com/tips-techniques/nature-landscapes/using-selective-focus/  

Week 10: Share 2 and Critique

For this week, I tried my hand at editing some of my photos. I'm still trying to figure out what to use on the image and when to use it; that takes practice, so I think I'll get better with time. But, as I'm beginning to see, editing is a finite work.

Week 8: Elephant Feet

Have you ever thought about an elephant's feet? I hadn't, not until I saw this picture.

Greg du Toit took this photo from inside a waterhole in Botswana. Born in South Africa, he is a professional wildlife photographer (we are going on one of his safaris for our photography trip). Looking into his work, I became interested in the kinds of pictures he takes and how he takes them. Perspective is an incredibly powerful thing, and he messes with it in a tasteful way, especially in his project "Inside the Waterhole." 

Photography well-done allows us to see through different eyes. We instantly switch from looking to seeing. It allows us to focus on pieces that then change the way we think of the whole. The world around us then becomes richer and fuller, more meaningful and more inspiring. We start thinking about elephant feet. I want this for my photography, to help people see.

Link to Greg du Toit's photos and website: http://gregdutoit.com/index.php?page=elephant_montage_ftf